"Toning Down" a homebrew Stout

Hi guys,

Not a lot of experience at this, but have had a few successful ales and have had a disaster with a lager dying on me and not being able to get it restarted. Have developed a taste for Stouts in recent months, and decided to give a homebrew a go.

Got the pretty standard Coopers Irish Stout kit, and it brewed well over the course of a week in a sealed container, after which it was transferred to bottles with a spoon of sugar to aid carbonation.

That was about 8 days ago, and have just had a taste of the beer, and it's almost overwhelmingly "stout". It's difficult to imagine being able to have much of it, as it has a lot of sediment and an almost overly-strong coffee flavour.

Is there any easy way to tone this down a bit? It would be a shame to only be able to stomach a few sips of the homebrew.

I feel that I'll be sticking to the ales from now on unless I can somehow salvage this. If anyone has any ideas how to avoid this in future I'd be all ears to hear it.

Thanks!

n97 mini

Leave it to age. The stronger flavours will mellow out with time.

Martyn1989

Deleted User wrote: »

Hi guys,

Not a lot of experience at this, but have had a few successful ales and have had a disaster with a lager dying on me and not being able to get it restarted. Have developed a taste for Stouts in recent months, and decided to give a homebrew a go.

Got the pretty standard Coopers Irish Stout kit, and it brewed well over the course of a week in a sealed container, after which it was transferred to bottles with a spoon of sugar to aid carbonation.

That was about 8 days ago, and have just had a taste of the beer, and it's almost overwhelmingly "stout". It's difficult to imagine being able to have much of it, as it has a lot of sediment and an almost overly-strong coffee flavour.

Is there any easy way to tone this down a bit? It would be a shame to only be able to stomach a few sips of the homebrew.

I feel that I'll be sticking to the ales from now on unless I can somehow salvage this. If anyone has any ideas how to avoid this in future I'd be all ears to hear it.

Thanks!

Yeh you just got to give it loads more time, its amazing how much the taste of a homebrew will change over a few weeks

oblivious

Give it time it will change and yeast will sediment out. the can be a yeast bit to beer when they have not have had tome to settle out

poitinstill

i made that with 1kg dme and some brown sugar it is good to go after about 10 days in a barrel....does mellow with time but there is deffinitly a coffee/choc hint in it till the end

homebrew.ie

hi its 2 weeks later just wondering how it tastes now?

i also discovered that i preferred any of the stouts i have made when i added a liquorice stick into the fermentation process.

apologies for taking an age to reply, but I've actually left the country since posting!

Just onto Dad at home there who said that it's "more" drinkable, but still remarkably coffee-ish. He'd be a well established Stout drinker, but reckons that any that wouldn't be as "practised" would struggle with it.

Is there anything he can do at this stage to mellow out the flavour?

poitinstill

if its still too strong now it will mellow in a number of weeks /months. if you want ot drink it now you could blend it 50:50 with somthing very bland even the likes of a bud/smithwicks to give you mixed thing the yanks call a black and tan. but time usually heals all. lock it away for 12 months and i bet you will wish you had more of it when its eventually gone.

The impatience is strong! I am home next weekend and would love to have it drinkable, I'm fairly disgusted at the idea of mixing it with horse piss (bud) though.

Will tell him to hide the bottles in the attic or something until we have another taste test at Christmas so.

poitinstill

time will sort it out..flavours will mix and mellow its better to have somthing to mellow than black piss (a stout version of bud)